Roberto Henriques

Programme Director (Master in Statistics and Information Management and Master in Information Management)

Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Business Intelligence, Knowledge and Security Management is probably one of the most dynamic Eduniversal categories. Universities have been moving swiftly to create advanced degree programs to deal with data analytics and digital transformation. Currently, business analytics provides organizations the ability to access its own data, gaining business insights that support decisions and can be used to automate and optimize business processes. Competences in this area have been added to several program syllabi in the field.

Changes in the technological and business landscape forced professionals to move from (traditional) analytics to big data environments, where new technological paradigms and approaches emerged, to provide a common perspective where these complementary processes are used together to perform data analysis.

Data is now mainstream and businesses call for data training. Hence, specializations from this field are focused on providing students with appropriate data science skills, allowing to incorporate data science knowledge into business strategies and to successfully manage teams of data scientists, while enhancing corporate capabilities.

The expert's corner

Migration from the analog world to the digital world has brought about changes in the habits of individuals and companies. How we interact, sell, provide services, create, invent, share, formalise contracts, issue invoices, auction goods and identify ourselves... all this has changed. Information – the new oil of the 21st century – has been the catalyst of this change. Innovation, meanwhile, is an increasingly important asset that is crucial for leadership in this new era. Today, we need innovative, experienced lawyers capable of successfully leading and managing the new legal challenges that the information era poses to today’s businesses.

The expert's corner

Hettie Tabor

Program director, MSBA program and an executive-in-residence at the Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University

Southern Methodist University

In the past, companies have focused on reporting, data management and business intelligence. Business Analytics goes beyond the traditional data, BI and reporting environments and focuses on how to better analyze business using information to gain insight. It extends data management and business intelligence (data warehousing) to enable the management of big data, and combines it with data analytics and business information to analyze consumer behavior, web site data, marketing data and even to perform predictive analytics. The broad and intensive curriculum across a range of management disciplines and functions explores the latest methods of translating data into relevant information for decision-makers.

Across all industries, firms today capture and maintain enormous amounts of individual-level data on their customers and prospects. This has led to a vast increase in data resources available—and a high demand for professionals who can translate technical data into actionable insights. With big data, firms can react in real-time to customize product and service offerings, if they have the highly specialized talent trained to leverage this increased complexity. By gaining a mastery of Business Analytics, students launch successful careers in the burgeoning field of business analytics from business analysts, data analysts, marketing analysts, financial analysts, data base and data warehouse architects to data scientists.

The expert's corner

Professor Inga Lapina

Vice Dean for Academic Affairs

Riga Technical University

Programmes in the area of Business Intelligence, Knowledge and Security Management develop competencies that enhance business processes in any modern organization and ensure successful, effective and efficient operation of the organization in the long term. Business intelligence is a technology-driven process for analysing and presenting actionable information to help corporate executives, business managers and other end-users make more informed business decisions, thus creating conditions in which the processes, products and services satisfy customers’ requirements and needs, are safe to use, create value for society and the environment. The increasing knowledge-based nature of competition is driving changes in how value chains are managed across companies. In the modern global economy, the increasingly rapid flow of information, and the growing recognition of the significance of intellectual capital, knowledge is claimed to be a critical resource of competitive advantage for organizations. It also signals a shift in organizations, whose mobile exponents demand a different type of organizational environment and executive leadership. Thus, business intelligence, knowledge and security management has enjoyed widespread popularity in today’s studies.